NY Server Farms Brace for #Debates Traffic

October 3, 2012 at 4:24 pm

DENVER, CO – OCTOBER 01: Workers continue construction of the set where the first presidential debate will take place at the University of Denver on October 1, 2012 in Denver, Colorado. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will square off against U.S. President Barack Obama in the first of three debates on October 3. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

The political site The Hill has been preparing its primary data center in New York for tonight’s first Presidential debate. The Hill and other political sites have to be ready during the fast-paced political news cycle because certain events cause sudden flares of traffic or spikiness, according to Data Center Knowledge. In order to prepare for this kind of spikiness, The Hill retooled its infrastructure with a new architecture to improve its load-balancing and caching capabilities.

“The election season raises the baseline,” said CEO of The Hill Ari Spivakovsky. “I can tell you that the difference between peaks and troughs is an order of magnitude difference.”